


I'm sorry.

by omgbellamy



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alliances, Angst, Enemies, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Love, Polis, Politics, Post-Episode: s03e03 Ye Who Enter Here, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 23:33:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6398752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omgbellamy/pseuds/omgbellamy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke has a moment alone. In which Clarke reflects on her relationship with Lexa and her situation in Polis and of course, Bellamy Blake. Clarke feels guilty for not coming home with Bellamy when he asked her, so she tries to express her feelings in an unlikely way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> All characters and plots go to the CW network, Kass Morgan and the writers of the show. I don't own. 
> 
> This might be slightly out of character. If it is, I'm sorry for that. It's just my take on what I think and hope Clarke would have said to Bellamy or tried to communicate to him and the rest of her people had she had the chance to do so.
> 
> (You should follow me on twitter for updates on fics and for t100 and bellarke trash! @omgbellamy)

Clarke needed peace. She stood over the balcony in Polis watching the sunset. Everyone was attending to political duties, including Lexa, who Clarke was still watching. She didn’t know whether she trusted the Commander at all yet, but they had an alliance to keep and as the ambassador of Skaikru Clarke knew she had to be the peacemaker.  
Sometimes Clarke in very fleeting, brief moments she allowed herself to resent her place of leadership. It might have been her mother and Kane who ran things over in Arcadia, but Clarke was the key chess piece in all of this. Lexa trusted Clarke and Clarke had trusted Lexa until the betrayal and now...she wasn’t sure. The Commander’s promise to protect Skaikru had seemed genuine when Lexa had sworn fealty to Clarke. Clarke was stunned and she respected the Commander for it because a true leader tries to rectify and learn from their mistakes. She could see she was trying.

Yet even amidst the beauty and wonder of Polis and the tower that she stood in, Clarke didn’t feel welcome. She knew in her own heart that her home and people were in Arcadia. The Grounders were courteous and kind to her, at least the ones here were. Lexa had shown Clarke the ways of the Grounders that had changed her perspective. She didn’t consider them enemies anymore, though with Lexa at this point, she didn’t know if she qualified them as friends.  
Truth be told, Clarke missed Arcadia. She missed her mother who she felt bad about dismissing at the summit. She missed Monty and Jasper and their happy care-free antics. She missed Raven and her strength and sass that gave Clarke laughs among the hardships they faced in camp. She missed Octavia too and her ability to fight, her warrior spirit and the old friendship that they’d had. She even wondered about Murphy sometimes and where the hell he was. She might not have been friends with him...but she hoped he was safe.

And then there was Bellamy.

Clarke felt an ache in her chest when she thought about him. She had dismissed him from the summit by saying, “I’m sorry.” He had asked her to come home with him, almost pleaded. But Clarke couldn’t she knew she couldn’t. As much as she had wanted to – god, she did – she had a job to do. People to protect. An alliance to keep with the Grounders. Becoming the Thirteenth Clan had helped to establish that. Clarke in truth didn’t mind Polis, she found the Grounder ways interesting and the cultural ceremony and the costume and song and everything about it fascinated her and terrified her at the same time.

But what pained her most was Bellamy’s face. Bellamy Blake had a lot of expressions and Clarke knew this from getting to know him. The two co-leaders knew each other almost inside out and communications through glances weren’t unusual between them. Bellamy Blake alone, however, expressed his emotions through his eyes. Clarke could read those dark eyes like any book. She could decipher by staring into them the kind of emotions that Bellamy was feeling, what he was thinking, even. The two-leaders were so in tune with each other that it didn’t even surprise anybody when the other would voice what one was thinking. It was just a natural part of their dynamic.

But that look Bellamy gave her...even Clarke couldn’t anticipate. The way his dark eyes had glided over her, scrutinizing her almost. He was being critical of her and Clarke knew it. She had almost wanted to squirm under his heavy gaze and the accusatory look that held itself in his eyes made that more tempting. But she didn’t and she couldn’t. She had to keep a cool and calm facade to ensure the people around her of her capability as an ambassador. And she didn’t.

Clarke hadn’t missed the way that Bellamy’s eyes had glided over to Lexa, who stood in front of her throne clad in a ceremonial dress which she complimented with a placid expression. “Clarke will be safe here under my protection,” she told Bellamy. Clarke didn’t intervene.  
Then as quick as he had came, he was gone, with members of Skaikru already gone, he was the last to leave the room and Clarke found herself holding back a sigh.  
She missed him. She missed him so much. Their friendship was something that Clarke had relied on as a constant throughout their time on Earth. He was always there to help her lead, to help her feel better, to help even to justify their horrible actions on Earth to help to keep on living.

The things we’ve done to survive, they don’t define us.  
If you need forgiveness, I’ll give that to you. You’re forgiven.  
What we did! You don’t have to do this alone.  
Together.  
Who we are and who we need to be to survive are very different things.

All those things he had said directly to her. It was a secret unspoken promise between them to ease the burdens that each other held. Clarke had certainly done so for Bellamy when he was feeling like a monster. When he’d told her so and she’d told him that he wasn’t, that he saved her life. That he was the kind of person who would live and die just to protect his sister. He was a leader too, like Clarke, with flaws and who had made mistakes and who had murdered. They were the same. 

She didn’t want to leave him again. She still felt guilty about leaving him the first time. She felt as if the burden – their shared burden – of Mount Weather had been pushed on him in a way, because she had left. She knew all too well Bellamy Blake had his own demons and guilt that he battled all the time thanks to previous actions as she had her own. Her way of coping with the tragic events was by leaving. She left the delinquents and her people in capable hands and she had the uttermost faith in him in his abilities to lead.

He was selfless now. He had come a long way from the asshole Bellamy Blake she had first met. He was no longer selfish in the way that came from protecting his own skin. He always cared about Octavia, but his fierce love and protection of her had allowed him now to let her go, to be the woman she was destined to be, the warrior that helped to fight alongside the Grounders. He had saved multiple people by risking himself to go into Mount Weather as the inside man, knowing that death could happen at any moment. He had done countless things that Clarke had counted as selfless that she couldn’t even believe he’d done another to try and save her.

Clarke’s stomach tightened at the memory. Maybe she was a masochist in how she loved to torture herself with emotional pain and guilt. But damn did she feel guilty about that, because she had never thanked him for trying to save her ass for the hundredth time. 

Clarke looked up, a terrified whimper escaping her gagged mouth. Her eyes felt hollow and cold as did she, as she sat there, tied up in the dark cold space where Roan had kept her. But as she looked up, her tiredness and sadness vanished because she met the eyes of the one person she wholeheartedly trusted and needed to see.  
Bellamy Blake.  
“Bellamy?” she whispered with wide eyes in a voice so low and vulnerable that she even surprised herself.  
Bellamy smiled a smile of relief and reached forward so tenderly, so slowly and touched his hand to her face, gently stroking away the hair that covered her eye. 

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he had said.  
And he had tried. Clarke didn’t even have the chance to thank him, to express her gratitude to him for all that he did for her, for the delinquents for their people. She knew she had done her fair share and of course, Clarke’s main priority was to help others, but Bellamy was always there. He was an anchor for her in many ways. He had helped her in the early stages of leadership when things came crashing down and he still did. Even after she had left him, probably hurt him so much, he came for her, trying to save her, resulting in a stab in the leg and her being hauled away by Roan to Polis. 

In that moment, Clarke made a decision. 

She decided she needed to express her feelings, to get them out and to clear her conscience. God knows that she didn’t have time for this with all of the political elements that were going on around her that she was a part of. Polis never gave Clarke a chance to stop and think for herself, to let her own emotions come out. The last three months for her were filled with suppression and distraction as she had lived out in the wilderness alone, only having the occasional contact with Nilyah who she sought comfort in.  
Clarke was going to write a letter.

Well, of sorts.

Polis had lots of amenities, and among these included paper and ink. It wasn’t the fancy kind that was available on the Ark. There were no touch screens and digital pens to use to draw or write things with. Here, outside of Arcadia and Mount Weather, everything was manual. 

Clarke wasn’t going to actually send it, because she knew Lexa’s advisers and personal protectors would be assigned to read any written communication that could potentially threaten her. Even if Lexa said otherwise, she knew those close to Lexa didn’t trust her like Lexa did.

She grabbed the paper and the pens that had been left in her room that she hadn’t bothered to use yet. Somehow somebody – definitely not Lexa – had known Clarke was artistic and liked to draw, so someone had delivered them to her room one day and had not said a word.

She sat down at a make-shift wooden desk and began writing with the pot of ink.

Dear Bellamy,  
I’m writing a letter. An actual, hand-written letter. I never thought I would see the day that I ever had to do this, but I just have to talk to you. Or at least to myself – to you. I need to say I’m sorry. I need you to know that I mean it. I mean every word. I wish more than anything that I could come home to Arcadia and be back with everyone again. Three months is a long time and a lot has changed. I haven’t accepted what happened at the Mountain and I don’t think I ever will, but I’m learning to live with it. The guilt is still there as I imagine it is with you as well, but time heals wounds, I suppose. 

I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry that I’ve let you and our people down. I did my very best to avoid any more destruction happening but you know as a leader it’s so difficult. And now, God, everything is fucked. I’m here now as an ambassador of our people. You have to understand that part – I have to be here. I need to make sure that Lexa keeps her word in protecting us from the Ice Nation, I need to make sure this time that I keep our people safe. I’m sorry I didn’t come back with you, I couldn’t. I’m sorry that I never said the words that I need to say now:

Thank you. God, Bellamy, thank you for trying to save me. You didn’t have to. You tried to free me even after I left you alone. I don’t know why you’d even bother; I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, but thank you for all you’ve done. You got a stab in your leg over it; I saw when Roan did it. You needn’t have bothered for me. I’m no-one. I hope when we meet again I can return the favor to you should you need it. 

Please tell everyone else that I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry to Raven for Finn, I’m sorry to Octavia for not trusting her, I’m sorry to Jasper for Maya, I’m sorry to Monty for having to deal with this, I’m sorry to my mother for leaving her, sorry to everyone that I can’t be back there yet. I will return when I can. Not as Wanheda, I hope. But as Clarke Griffin, a member of Skaikru united with 12 other clans. I hope we can talk when I get back. I hope that things can finally start to improve.

May we meet again,  
Clarke.

Clarke signed off her name and put the letter down on the desk, sighing heavily.  
She only hoped that it would be the start to repairing things.


End file.
